State and local government employer costs for employee compensation, September 2011

State and local government employers spent an average of $40.76 per hour worked for employee compensation in September 2011. Wages and salaries averaged $26.57 per hour and 65.2 percent of compensation costs, while benefits averaged $14.19 per hour worked and accounted for the remaining 34.8 percent.

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Total compensation for management, professional, and related occupations, which represent approximately half of all state and local government employment, averaged $49.37 per hour worked. Average hourly compensation costs were $30.86 for service occupations and $28.49 for sales and office occupations.

For state and local government employees, employer costs for insurance benefits were $4.89 per hour, or 12.0 percent of total compensation. The largest component of insurance costs was health insurance, which averaged $4.74, or 11.6 percent of total compensation.

In September 2011, the average cost for retirement and savings benefits was $3.42 per hour worked in state and local government (8.4 percent of total compensation).

These data are from the BLS Employment Cost Trends program and are for private industry and state and local government employers. To learn more, see "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation — September 2011" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-11-1718.